Resources for reflection for NOVEMBER 2026 on HEALING

Download this month's resources: Nov. 2026 Healing

Download resources from previous months: Oct. 2026  Courage,  Sept. 2026 Beginnings

DAILY PRACTICE

Chalice Lighting Bring your broken heart before this chalice. Bring what’s dying inside you to the altar of life. Bring your anger too, and your joy, and your passion. Bring your need for healing and your power to heal. There is sacred work to do and together we have what we need to do it. - adapted from Rev. Angela Herrera

Reading So let us give thanks for the broken places in our hearts, and in our lives. For it is only through such brokenness that we may truly touch one another and only through touching one another that the world may be healed - Thomas Rhodes

Chalice Extinguishing We extinguish the chalice but carry the spirit of healing with us. May it help us to understand one another, to listen to the stories of who we are, and to find common ground on which we can stand and walk together.

FOR PONDERING

  • It’s important to remember that there is a HUGE difference between being a mistake and making a mistake, between failing and being a failure.
  • Fixing, teaching, and setting each other straight doesn’t heal us. Journeying together and sharing a common life just might.
  • How have you experienced time as a healing agent? Does time heal or does it just pass. If time doesn’t heal, what have you found healing as time goes by?
  • What if wounding and healing are not opposites but just parts of the same thing in that our wounds enable us to be compassionate with the wounds of others.

QUOTES

  • “When you don’t give people the chance to say, ´I hurt´ they end up saying ‘I hate.” - Rev. Don Wheat
  • “Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.” - bell hooks
  • “The miracle of healing can’t be rushed, because as we are healing, we are re-forming, like a broken bone knitting back together.” - Rev. Darcey Laine
  • “Have you ever noticed how beautiful a person is after they’ve wept? It’s as if they are made new again by the baptism of tears.” - Toko-pa Turner

MOVIES & TV

  • The Bear - streaming on Hulu
  • Somebody, Somewhere - streaming on HBO
  • Remarkably Bright Creatures - movie, Netflix
  • Keep Quiet and Forgive, movie - PBS

BOOKS

  • Faith, Hope, and Carnage by Nick Cave and Sean O;Haran
  • Healing Spiritual Wounds: Reconnecting with a Loving God After Experiencing a Hurtful Church by Carol Howard Merritt
  • The Wounded Healer by Henri J. M. Nouwen
  • The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk